1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a conductive wire piece supply method and a conductive wire piece supply device for supplying a receiving unit with conductive wire pieces each having a rectangular cross section and sent from a sending unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, this type of conductive wire piece is obtained by cutting a rectangular wire having a rectangular cross section in a conductive wire piece manufacturing device as a sending unit. Then, the obtained conductive wire piece is supplied to a forming device as a receiving unit and formed in a substantially U shape. The formed conductive wire piece is used to shape a stator coil.
In the shaping, many conductive wire pieces are annularly aligned with U-shaped central portions thereof superposed and the conductive wire pieces are inserted into slots of a stator core from both end sides of the U shape. Thereby, the ends of the respective conductive wire pieces project from the respective slots. Then, the projecting ends of the conductive wire pieces are joined to each other, by which a stator coil is made (for example, refer to Patent Document 1).
In addition, as this type of conductive wire piece, there is known one formed in such a way that each conductive wire piece set made of a plurality of conductive wire pieces superposed on each other is formed in a U shape (Refer to Patent Document 2). The formed conductive wire piece sets are annularly arranged so as to be partially superposed and inserted into slots of a stator core from both end sides. Furthermore, the end sides of the conductive wire pieces projecting from the slots are folded and the ends corresponding to each other are joined together, by which a stator coil is made.